Special Affair

There was not a man you came across who you did not want to send to their death.

So you did.

You think often of how you died with a man inside of you and of how you came alive again with the love of a woman’s.

Time and time, it has been shown that people fear most what they do not know, or worse, what they do not understand. For that reason, of course -- that no man had ever been allowed to live to tell of your slithering snakes, of your eyes glimmering fluorescent against dark skin -- was why you were feared.

It is not that you are beautiful. It is that you are dangerous.

After all, who else had a temple desecrated, came apart, and then had every bone and limb sewn back together?

After all, who dared to defy a god with mere refusal like you? Who fought and made a victory of her own?

And tell me now, who lived better to tell the tale than you?



You think about the many tales your father told you about finding someone who would work besides you on his land and help you birth strong sons to protect the home that girls like you deserve. Your father says that although you are dirt poor like your parents you are a beautiful girl, and you are meant to live a life of luxury. You both know you will never taste leisure a day in your life. Your mother tells you how blessed girls like you, who visit temples and pray to the deities, are destined to find comfortable love and fruitful lives. The few and brief friends you had tell you you are not like girls who walk the line and your duty will be greatly fulfilled, and the gods will bless you for your existence.

You think about your existence, how you’ve been told of your future for you and then realize the story you live was not meant for girls because you are not just a girl.

However, you do not come to that realization until you are dead.



Before you became a monster, you were not this tainted, this broken, but it is all to the fault of the Gods. Born a beautiful maiden to gentle parents, your short and unremarkable life before your fate was nothing spectacular. Such beauty for a peasant girl was uncommon and as the first and only born daughter, you were known for brown skin that stretched over a strong back, thick thighs, and wide hips. There were not many men that did not want to chase your skirts and you learned to become prey before you ever knew that you could be a predator too. Your hair was thick like wool and your hands were never soft but your heart was always full. You did not go to school and you could not read well, but you taught yourself what you could in between caring for your ill parents, caring for their land, and caring for your duties to the gods.

If your parents fell ill, you were not far behind. You managed to fare well for six months. You think the offerings such as olives and wine brought to temples has helped, and maybe they have. Maybe not.

When the cotton sheets of your hay filled bed stick to your sweaty skin and your lungs are on fire, you know that this misery must preface worse yet to come. You are sick so you pray.

You carry on with your duties: the animals are fed (even the two roosters who will stop at nothing to wear you out), the wilting crops are not dying for lack of your attempts, and the food you make is given first to the husband and wife who sit inside -- you take the little that is left. You are young and you will be fine.

You repeat that last sentence until you feel better. The feeling does not come, so you pray.

You pray when you wake up, when you plant more seeds, and when you dip your naked body into the lake by your house. You pray and your back bends and you wonder why the gods curse mortals like you.

Neith’s temple is your favorite and the one you visit often. This is not just because in your heart, Neith is your favorite as well, but smooth steps lead to a circular platform where an arched entryway wrapped in vines lead into a graceful prayer room. Lit flames are held carefully at each corner of the room from tall columns, beautiful murals immortalized on the walls that were meant to provide safety and beauty from the goddess herself.

Whether it was your status of already being unwell, or the fact that this night held importance in your fate, shivers were already causing your body to tremble. You felt comfortable in the darkness until the flames flickered and a man with light spilling from his skin appeared out of thin air. You nearly dropped the frankincense and oils you had begun to burn inside the temple but your hands were the only things that remained steady.

You were already on your knees to pray when he approached, and you can tell that he is unlike any other mortal you have ever met because he is not one. He has clear blue eyes that remind you of waters that you have only heard of in far lands and distantly of the sky when there are no clouds in sight. There is mist in the air and you are groggy with sickness. You don’t have to ask who he is because he makes it known - as men like him often do.

“I am Oannes,” he drawls, and this is the calamitous moment when disaster truly strikes.

Your life will never be, and is never, the same.



She does not ask if you are hurt because she can tell that you are dead.

Your tears have run dry but for some reason she picks up where you left off. You did not know that Gods, much less one like Neith, would cry for someone like you.

You are not used to men walking into your body and making a home out of it like it is theirs. You figure a little too late that if there is anything that the Gods and humans share it is evil, but this would matter more if you weren’t dead.

She does not touch you at first but now you are both on your knees and somehow for reasons unexplained, she can take your pain away. The fire that usually lit the temple had gone out when you had refused Oannes. It did not take him long before he showed you how trivial he thought of your opinions to your own body. When Neith puts two fingers on a wound, on scratches left on your forearm, the temple is lit with tall fires and her eyebrows are furrowed together, too busy tending to your wounds to notice that you are still in shock and you are dead.

“I was weak,” you tell her, is all you know how to say, because she is crying and there is nothing else but pain. You know that your heart is still beating and you still draw breath into your lungs but there is still his touch on your brown skin and you feel sick to your stomach. His hands haunt the places where they did nothing but destroy and you wonder what your life is meant to be. You feel like he put you into a grave, buried you alive, and put a tombstone on your chest.

She shakes her head no and the tears you thought had run dry are now back again.

She tells you her name is Neith and that she will always protect you but that is not what you want. You don’t care about whatever promises she wants to give you.

“I never want to be weak again,” you tell her again and again and again until she grants your wish.



You have no choice but to leave. You do not venture from your new hidden home often because there is no reason to. The trees all around are strong and rooted because for some strange reason, the wood nymphs did not vacate their homes for you, instead they wait and they watch for you. You do not tell them this, but you do what you can to protect them too. Forlorn male hunters of nymphs will never be an issue again. There are now stone statues around the forest, but the nymphs don’t mind because they are safe now and so are you.

You live high up, hidden by mountains, and far from any villages whose mortals would cross casual paths with you. You take what you want from the earth and have realized that you do not age like a maiden should because you are no longer one. So you learn to hunt. You learn to read. You exist. You have somehow found a blind dog that you let come and go from your house until one day the creature curiously decides to stay in your territory, suddenly never straying far even though the snakes that nudge against your neck, ears, and lips always hiss at the dog. You feed him dried meat occasionally and the snakes that love you soon warm up to the small creature.

You think about the time you walked into a village, danced into a bar, unveiled yourself and no one but a few women were left alive to tell the tale. You remember all the faces caught in horror, stuck forever in stone, and then laughing to the point of your stomach hurting. Men who had preyed upon their wives, daughters, nieces, who had asked the women to spill over for them so they could fill their thirst - all turned to stone, all at your doing. This is the closest to happiness you think you are allowed.

You took their drinks, laughed a sound somewhat akin to being merry, and wrapped your arms around stone statues like they were your friends. You find that cool cement is as close as you will let anyone feel your skin. (This is not counting Neith, you could not turn her to cement if you tried. You do not stop to wonder whether you would if the option existed).

You finally have all of yourself, you will always have your snakes because they are the protection that no one can take away from you, and that is all you ever really needed. You delighted in your monstrosity like never before because it is no one else’s. You love how fangs make your mouth heavy, how poison lays viciously on your tongue, and how the constant humming and hissing on your scalp, in your ears, is a part of you that you did not know you were missing until now.

You are not a mortal, you are not a god, and it is delicious to say that you are Medha.



This is your story and you are a snake for the way you strike, you are a raven for the way your claws latch, and you are a wolf for the way no one will own you, not even the moon.

You are not just a girl, you are a gun and everyone will regret the second they doubt you can or will pull the trigger.

You are not flowers in your mouth or in your pussy, you are poison in your fingers and in your blood - there is no honey on your skin and no one can have you.

You are not just a girl.

You are so much more.

You tell her this and she says yes.

You scream that you will not break your back for anyone (anymore) and that the gods are human too and she does not object or call you a liar.

She is Neith, a goddess, and shouldn’t still be concerned about you but you find that she is.

You scream bloody murder again.

She lets you.

She does not leave you.

At least, not until after she has kissed you senseless. You never objected before (you were the one to kiss her first over many ‘firsts’), and you do not start objecting now.

You think she may not come back because you are a monster and she is a goddess and her kind made you this way but when you wait for her, you don’t have to wait long.

You never say you are sorry and neither does she.

(However, you cry for the first time since Oannes killed you and she takes your tears and manages to have you smiling within the next 5 minutes. Her arms begin to feel like home too).



Decades pass and times change so you and her must as well.

You ask her why there haven’t been (more) ‘heroes’ sent after you for the curses you’ve muttered against Oannes and the strange thing on Neith’s face looks like love. She explains that she gave you protection for the future, and vengeance for the past. You have forgotten but if you are a gun, then Neith is the bullet that will do more than just bite. Not even her brother can escape her fury and he would not dare try now. She is a force to be reckoned with (you know this is true because of the way she whispers, “Yes, I love you,” when she thinks you are asleep). You make sure to remember all of this when you find her at your feet and disappearing between your thighs.

“Is this what it must feel like to have people at your feet and gracing you as if you were a God?” you ask her (with not a lot of breath in your voice) on a soft bed that you took from someone who made the mistake of annoying you. It was a good addition to the home you’ve been building. She nips you on your hip with gentle teeth and it’s the first reason in a lifetime that you can think to laugh.

She does not need mortal food but you do - she will occasionally sip ambrosia in front of you - but when you make meals, she sits and dines with you. There are times when you lounge around the house and you will find books that you never took from neighboring villages and you know that she brought them to you. You don’t know what to do about this, but you think that strangely, there’s a pit of snakes growing in your stomach. You never did care for butterflies.

You pull the leaves out of her hair and replace them with flowers.

“How do I look?” she asks you, fingers gently touching the fuchsia petals that you so carefully have framing her face. She is what you imagine poised elegance and grace to look like.

“They’re not snakes but they will do,” you respond after pretending to contemplate the matter. She rolls her eyes instead of glaring so you kiss the corner of her mouth because you are not ready to tell her that you love her so much that you would hate her if it was possible.

She stays in your bed and in your home for days, weeks, months at a time. Your hair never grows long because Agunua, Galeru, and Bashe (some of your beloved snakes) do not like it when your thick hair nearly threatens to smother them from breathing or seeing. You keep your curls in a frenzy and sometimes Neith helps you with scissors because there are days when where even mirrors are too much for you. Her hair is fitting of a goddess. It is not just long, but it feels like silk when she lets you braid it, then unravel it. It is coily and curly like yours and sometimes your Agunua and Bashe will wrap themselves around the kinks in her hair when the two of you are lying together, chest to chest, limbs slotted together like a natural fit. If you think that your snakes enjoy her presence, you don’t even want to think about how you feel.

She did not just give you a mask of grotesque, a protection for retribution. She gives you love and you somehow learn to let yourself do the same.

You have lost track of time. Decades must now be centuries. Finally, you feel like you can disappear, like you can lose yourself in her and she gently reminds you that you don’t have to. Finally, you think. Finally.